Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Russian Officer Convicted of Spying for CIA. A military court on Friday convicted a Russian officer of providing the CIA with secret information on Russia's new intercontinental ballistic missiles and sentenced him to 13 years in prison.

Lt. Col. Vladimir Nesterets pleaded guilty to passing on that classified information in exchange for money, said the Federal Security Service, the main agency that replaced the KGB.

The agency said Nesterets committed treason as he worked as a senior engineer at the Plesetsk launch pad in northwestern Russia, a facility the military uses to launch satellites and test its new missile systems.

The security service's terse statement did not say when Nesterets had been arrested or give any further details about his case.

Russia's RIA Novosti news agency quoted the officer's wife, Irina, as saying she could not understand the guilty plea because her husband had told her he did nothing wrong and had not betrayed his country.

The conviction comes amid growing tension in U.S.-Russian relations, despite President Barack Obama's efforts to overcome strains that had developed during the previous U.S. administration. [Read more: Goguelin/AP/10February2012]

Chinese Espionage Cases Touch DuPont, Motorola. U.S. prosecutors expanded a criminal case over the alleged theft of industrial secrets from chemical giant DuPont, securing an indictment against a Chinese company on economic espionage-related charges.

A Northern California grand jury indicted Pangang Group for conspiracy to commit economic espionage and other charges including conspiracy to steal trade secrets, according to court documents unsealed on Wednesday.

Pangang, a state-owned steel manufacturer in Sichuan province, allegedly worked with a California businessman and others to obtain several valuable trade secrets from DuPont, the indictment says.

Separately, a former engineer for Motorola Inc was found guilty on Wednesday of stealing trade secrets from the company but cleared of economic espionage for China.

The latest developments in the two cases come as Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping is scheduled to visit the United States next week on a range of economic, trade, regional and global issues.

Xi, considered China's president-in-waiting, will meet President Barack Obama at the White House next Tuesday. The U.S. visit will be a major step in signaling Xi's readiness to take over as China's next top leader and run Beijing's complex and sometimes vexed relationship with Washington.

The United States has identified industrial spying as a significant and growing threat to the nation's prosperity. In a government report released last November, authorities cited China as "the world's most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage." [Read more: Levine&Kelleher/Reuters/9February2012]

Pakistani High Court Delays Spy Agency Hearing. Pakistan's Supreme Court postponed a rare public hearing for the country's secretive and powerful spy agency Thursday, a lawyer for one of the alleged victims of the agency said.

Long thought to be untouchable, the ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence, has been ordered to produce seven men it's accused of holding since 2010 and explaining the deaths of four other detainees.

But attorney Tariq Asad told CNN the court had delayed the hearing until Friday because other proceedings took up much of the day.

Asad said it was clear the lawyer for the ISI, who was present when the postponement was announced, had not brought the seven detainees to court as ordered.

The spy agency's lawyer presented the court with medical certificates for four of them to show they were hospitalized, and he asked permission from the court to present confidential letters explaining the whereabouts of the other three men, Asad said.

It's not yet clear if the spy agency will produce the detainees at Friday's hearing. [Read more: Sayah/CNN/9February2012]

MARSOC, Intel Teams Spotlighted In 'Bold Alligator'. Ship to shore operations were not the only thing the Navy and Marine Corps looked to sharpen during the biggest amphibious exercise in over a decade.

Bold Alligator 2012 featured a significant role for special operations, intelligence and civil affairs units, Col. Scott Aiken, chief of staff for the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, said this week. The exercise replicated a sea-to-shore assault spearheaded by U.S. and coalition forces against enemy troops from a fictional country. This year, American and allied forces from the 2nd MEB and the 2nd Expeditionary Strike Group will push back enemy troops from the country of "Garnet", who invaded the neighboring country of "Amberland" yesterday.

The special operations element - the first time they've been used in a major amphibious exercise like this, according to a senior Marine commander - used during the exercise was a mix of simulated forces and actual boots on the ground, Aiken said. The real-world special operations elements were pulled from units in Marine Corps Special Operations Command and force recon troops from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. Those forces were used for "shaping" operations, or for missions designed to prepare the shoreline and areas inland for the arriving Marine Corps. Those troops also provided intelligence for a planned deep insert air assault against an enemy encampment at Ft. Pickett, VA, Aiken said. That raid will be led by the 24th MEU later this week, Aiken said.

Hejlik stressed the importance of integrating special operations forces into Marine operations during a breakfast in Washington last week. The three-star general said getting those two groups to work closer together was a key goal for Bold Alligator planners. Increasing the ranks within MARSOC is a key part of the Marines post-Afghanistan force structure, especially as the service's total force drops to 181,000 troops. But current budget pressures may hinder that growth, Hejlik said at the time. The Marines "will not get the plus-up we expected" for their special forces cadre in the upcoming fiscal 2013 defense bill, Hejlik said. He did not go into specifics on how low that potential MARSOC troop increase could go. But the three-star general did note his lowered expectations for the Corps' special operations force was tied to the service's pending troop drawdown.

Aside from special operations forces, service planners also inserted Navy and Marine Corps intelligence exploitation and maritime civil affairs teams as part of the exercise. The teams carried out a simulated insertion into Amberland to meet with local leaders prior to the beach assault, Lt. Cmdr George Pastoor, a Dutch naval officer attached to Expeditionary Strike Group 2, explained. Along with coordinating and supporting indigenous forces, the teams also fed key intelligence back to Marine Corps and Navy planners here, Pastoor said. In guidance sent to Bold Alligator planners, U.S. Fleet Forces Command chief Adm. John Harvey directed service strategists to explore possible modifications to maritime intelligence requirements via the exercise. [Read more: Munoz/AOLDefense/7February2012]

Common Standards Evade Unmanned Ops, Admiral Says. Despite the tremendous impact unmanned systems are having on the battlefield, military leaders still struggle to get intelligence gathered from these systems into the hands of those who need it.

The systems designed to stream raw data collected by the diverse fleet of unmanned systems in the field continued to hamstring combatant commanders and Pentagon leaders alike, Rear Adm. Bill Shannon, the Navy's program executive officer for unmanned aviation and strike weapons, said today. These systems are designed to handle the back-end of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations.

The problem with those processing, exploitation and dissemination (PED) tools is that there is no commonality between the various systems build to do that job, Shannon said. It has become a monumental task to shift data between the various service-centric relay nodes that take data from UAS and move them into the PED cycle. Questions over who needs to have access to what data and how to move data across services have been hurdles for which DoD strategists have yet to find solutions.

Top Pentagon brass began to tackle the problem in earnest in 2008, when then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates criticized the services - particularly the Air Force - for not providing enough UAS to combat commanders in Southwest Asia. During his speech at the Air War College, Gates infamously said getting UAS assets into the field was "like pulling teeth". Shortly thereafter, all the services began flooding the seas and skies with unmanned systems. But that increase created problems for service intel analysts, who suddenly were inundated with reams of raw data collected by these new assets. That problem continues to this day, according to Shannon. [Read more: Munoz/AOLDefense/8February2012]

China Probes Police Official After Obama Administration Rejected Asylum Request. The Obama administration rebuffed a senior Chinese police official in southern China who sought to defect, turning him away after his presence became known to Chinese security forces.

An administration official familiar with China affairs said the botched defection of Wang Lijun, a vice mayor and chief crime investigator in Chongquing, was mishandled not only by local American officials in China but also by White House and State Department officials in Washington unwilling to upset China by granting Wang refuge in the consulate.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.) chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on oversight and investigations, said in an interview last night that the administration's handling of the Wang case is something the subcommittee will investigate.

"There seems to be repetitive examples of people trying to help the United States who end up suffering," Rohrabacher said, noting Pakistan's prosecution of a Pakistani doctor who helped U.S. intelligence locate and kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Ladin.

In the case of Wang, it appears "the State Department is either clueless or duplicitous regarding the very nature of the gangster regime in Beijing."

The official said Wang's defection would have provided a windfall for U.S. intelligence agencies that currently lack insight into the secretive world of Chinese leadership politics. [Read more: Gertz/WashingtonFreeBeacon/10February2012]

Germany Expels Four Syrian Diplomats Amid Espionage Charges. The German government expelled four Syrian diplomats, escalating a standoff after this week's arrest in Berlin of two men suspected of spying for Syrian intelligence on opposition groups active in Germany.

The four embassy personnel and their families have three days to leave the country, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told reporters. He informed the Syrian ambassador of the decision today after summoning the envoy on Feb. 7, the day of the arrests, to warn against espionage activity.

"We won't accept this in any way," Westerwelle said in Berlin, without elaborating on specific allegations against the diplomats, saying only that the move to expel them came amid a "comprehensive background" of espionage allegations as well as the political situation in Syria. "In Germany, no opposition figures will come under pressure, at least not without consequences," he said. [Read more: Donahue/Bloomberg/9February2012]

Library Named for Joe Goulden, VMI's IS Board Member. Joe Goulden, a member of Virginia Military Institute's International Studies Advisory Board, visited post on Nov. 2 for the dedication of the Joseph C. Goulden Library of International Studies and Political Science. The library, located in Scott Shipp 448, contains around 3,000 books from the personal collection of the author and former counterintelligence operative.

Goulden expressed his sense that he had been adopted as a member of the VMI community and voiced the high opinion he has for VMI's cadets.

"To me the nice thing about coming down here is realizing the high level of cadets that you have here; it's incredible," said Goulden. "It's a different world."

Col. Jim Hentz, professor of international studies, and Capt. Susan Raeburn, director of the Center for Leadership and Ethics, were instrumental in convincing the administration to break with the tradition of naming facilities primarily in honor of VMI faculty and graduates because of Goulden's unique contributions as a member of the International Studies Advisory Board.

Goulden has been contributing his expertise and connections for the benefit of the international studies department for over a decade.

"He's been on the board since I came here, and I've been here 14 years," said Hentz. "It seemed like an appropriate time to do this for him." 

Goulden is one of the longest serving members of the board, and, along with members Mark Cowan, a partner at Patton Boggs law firm, and Ambassador Read Hanmer '55, has been part of the board since its early days. [Read more: Robertson/VMI/December2011]

P.S. Goulden has just released a newly updated version of his long sought Dictionary of Espionage: Spyspeak into English, with a new foreword by Peter Earnest, Exec Dir International Spy Museum. [Dover, 2012, 256p].

Spy Networks Near Iran an Open Secret. The London Times published Sunday an interview with a man claiming to be an Azerbaijan-based agent of Israeli intelligence agency, who confirmed the existence of such a base.

The man, identified in the article as "Shimon," told the paper that there were dozens of Israeli Mossad agents working out of the base. 

"This is ground zero for intelligence work," he said. "Our presence here is quiet, but substantial. We have increased our presence in the past year, and it gets us very close to Iran. This is a wonderfully porous country."

The meeting between the agent and the London Times' reporter took place in Baku, near the Israeli Embassy, the report said.

The Israeli mission to Baku has come under threat recently, when it became the apparent target of a terror attack, meant to avenge the assassination of terrorist mastermind Imad Mugniyah, four years ago.

Bako is several-hours drive south of the Iranian border, an area "Shimon" referred to as a "grey zone for intelligence operatives... There is a great deal of information there from people who regularly and freely travel across the borders.

"It's mostly unregulated - except for the Iranians who are watching us watch them," he said.

Arastun Orujlu, a former Azeri counter-intelligence officer and director of the Baku East-West Research Center compared the area to "Norway during WWI or Casablanca during WW2 - it is at the centre of the espionage world."

Orujlu believes that there are "only a few Mossad agents working there... but they operated in a more effective way," than the Iranian intelligence agents, who he said number in the thousands. [Read more: YNet/12February2012]

Leaks, National Security, and Freedom of the Press. A new book-length study of leaks of classified information published by the Defense Intelligence Agency's National Intelligence University contends that "the tension between maintaining national security secrets and the public's right to know cannot be 'solved', but can be better understood and more intelligently managed."

"Who Watches the Watchmen?" by Gary Ross explores the phenomenon of leaks from multiple angles, including their history, their prevalence and their consequences. Most interestingly, he considers the diverse motivations of leakers and of the reporters who solicit, receive and publish their disclosures. Some of these he finds defensible, and others not.

In the end, he advises that government officials should engage members of the media in a constructive dialog in order to avert the worst consequences of leaks.

"Proactively engaging with the media to examine the costs and benefits associated with unauthorized disclosures represents the greatest potential for reducing the perceived harm to national security," Mr. Ross writes. [Read more: Aftergood/SecrecyNews/8February2012]

CIA Adds Hurdles to Mandatory Review Requests. In recent years the Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) process has become an increasingly useful alternative to the Freedom of Information Act by which members of the public can challenge the classification of government records. Remarkably, agency classification positions have been overturned with some frequency in the MDR appeals process, which is something that almost never happens in FOIA litigation.

In a dubious act of recognition of the growing effectiveness of MDR, the Central Intelligence Agency has recently imposed substantial new fees that seem calculated to discourage its use by public requesters.

Last September the CIA issued new regulations specifying that declassification reviews would now cost up to $72 per hour even if no responsive records were found or released. There is also a minimum fee of $15 for reproduction of any document, no matter how few pages it might consist of.

"Search fees are assessable even if we find no records, or, if we find any, we determine that we cannot release them," the CIA wrote last month in response to an MDR request from the National Security Archive. "Consequently, we will charge you even if our search results are negative or if we cannot release any information. Accordingly, we will need your commitment to pay applicable fees before we can proceed." [Read more: Aftergood/SecrecyNews/13February2012]

US Air Force Gives U-2 Spy Plane Another Lease on Life. The aging U-2 spy plane of Cold War fame has avoided retirement and will stay in the air until 2025, the Air Force said Monday, because the costly drone due to replace it turned out to be less effective.

As part of cost-saving measures announced by the Pentagon, officials concluded the U-2 jet - which dates back to the 1950s - provided better value than a version of the Global Hawk unmanned aircraft, which had been scheduled to take the U-2's place by 2015.

Both aircraft fly at high altitude for surveillance flights over Afghanistan and elsewhere, retrieving pictures and eavesdropping. But the U-2's sensors produce much higher quality imagery than the Global Hawk's equipment, Air Force General Larry Spencer told reporters

Spencer said "it would be cost-prohibitive to try to get the Global Hawk as capable as the U-2." [Read more: AFP/13Feburary2012]

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

A New Net. A startup called Nicira is reinventing computer networking with an audacious goal: to make all kinds of Internet services smarter, faster, and cheaper. 

In 2003 Mart�n Casado found himself with no small challenge on his hands: he needed to reinvent the technology that underpins the Internet. It had been developed decades earlier and was proving unsuited to an era of cyberwarfare.

Casado, then a researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, had been approached by a U.S. intelligence agency with a thorny problem. Computer networking technology allowed intelligence agents and other government workers worldwide to stay connected to one another at all times. Field agents could instantly share data seized in a raid with experts anywhere in the world. But the fact that so many computer networks were enmeshed also aided enemy hackers. Once they gained entry to one system, they could hop across networks to search for other treasures. The agency (Casado won't say which one) told him it wanted to keep its large network but reserve the ability to temporarily close off parts of it for crucial transmissions, creating a data equivalent of the dedicated telephone hotline that used to link the White House and the Kremlin.

Casado ultimately realized that he couldn't help. Partly because the Internet was created with unreliable equipment, its creators had wanted to make sure that it would work even if some parts malfunctioned. Thus, the networking hardware all operated independently and without central control. That's good if you want information to keep flowing in dire circumstances, but it's not so good if you want the option of isolating a specific communication channel within that network so as to keep secrets secret. For Casado to do what the intelligence agency wanted, each piece of hardware in a network would have to be reconfigured in a slow and manual process. "We hacked something together which in the end didn't give us the properties they wanted," he says.

That humbling experience has shaped his life since. Haunted by the problem, he soon left Livermore and entered grad school at Stanford University to search for an answer. He presented one in his 2007 PhD thesis, which proposed a radical new way for computer networks to operate. Now he's cofounded a company called Nicira, which is poised to use that idea to make the Internet more powerful than ever before. Nicira's technology won't just help intelligence agencies keep secrets. It should also improve the security, lower the price, and increase the power of any technology that uses the Internet, unlocking innovation that is too expensive or technically impossible to achieve today. Along the way, Nicira (the name is pronounced "Nis-ee-ra" and means "vigilant" in Sanskrit) could very well upend some of the world's largest technology companies. [Read more: Simonite/MIT/March/April2012]

What Makes a Perfect Spy Tick? On a rainy day in the spring of 1967, I shuffled into a classroom at the U.S. Army Intelligence School at Fort Holabird, Md., in a grimy industrial area of East Baltimore. There were about 30 of us, mostly college graduates, including newly minted lawyers and a few erstwhile hippies who had received draft notices. It was the first day of a seven-month course blandly titled "Area Studies."

In fact, we were going to learn to be spies.

Truth be told, few of us expected to be turned into James Bonds. Most of us had volunteered for an extra year's enlistment in intelligence to avoid being shipped off to South Vietnam with a rifle.

Of course, intelligence did sound exciting, and only vaguely dangerous. I doubt that any of us knew exactly what to expect. A cross between "Mission: Impossible" and "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold," maybe.

The shades were drawn. A rectangular red sign, "SECRET," was slid into a bracket on the front wall. An instructor stepped to the podium.

I remember him saying something like: "This is the only thing in the Army that you can volunteer for and then get out of if you change your mind." That's because we had signed up for something illegal, even immoral, according to some people, he said.

It was called espionage. We were not going to be turned into spies, he explained, but "case officers" - the people who recruit foreigners to be spies. Put another way, he went on, we were going to persuade foreigners to be traitors, to steal their countries' secrets. We were going to learn how to lie, steal, cheat to accomplish our mission, he said - and betray people who trusted us, if need be. Anyone who objected, he concluded, could walk out right now.

He looked around. One man got up and left. The rest of us, a little anxious, stayed put.

And then we were off. Espionage training, it turned out, was a gas - a boy's life, really, what with running around Baltimore planting "dead drops" under park benches, eluding spy catchers, practicing "brush passes" on city streets, writing messages in "invisible ink." We learned how to send an agent behind the Iron Curtain and get him back out. On my final training exercise, I slipped into Connecticut via submarine, en route to my target in a Midwestern city.

Alas, with the Vietnam War raging, Berlin (where "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" was set) wasn't in the cards. After a year in language school, I would ship out to Da Nang. I spent a year living undercover and running a spy net. But other than connecting briefly with a secret courier on a deserted beach every few days and slipping into decrepit hotels for meetings with my top spy, it wasn't anything like the scenario we had been trained for, to dispatch agents into Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe from West Berlin.

But in the end, it was the most interesting, and perhaps meaningful, thing I've ever done. [Read more: Stein/WashingtonPost/9February]

Traveling Light in a Time of Digital Thievery. When Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a China expert at the Brookings Institution, travels to that country, he follows a routine that seems straight from a spy film. 

He leaves his cellphone and laptop at home and instead brings "loaner" devices, which he erases before he leaves the United States and wipes clean the minute he returns. In China, he disables Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, never lets his phone out of his sight and, in meetings, not only turns off his phone but also removes the battery, for fear his microphone could be turned on remotely. He connects to the Internet only through an encrypted, password-protected channel, and copies and pastes his password from a USB thumb drive. He never types in a password directly, because, he said, "the Chinese are very good at installing key-logging software on your laptop."

What might have once sounded like the behavior of a paranoid is now standard operating procedure for officials at American government agencies, research groups and companies that do business in China and Russia - like Google, the State Department and the Internet security giant McAfee. Digital espionage in these countries, security experts say, is a real and growing threat - whether in pursuit of confidential government information or corporate trade secrets.

"If a company has significant intellectual property that the Chinese and Russians are interested in, and you go over there with mobile devices, your devices will get penetrated," said Joel F. Brenner, formerly the top counterintelligence official in the office of the director of national intelligence. [Read more: Perlroth/NYTimes/10February2012]

Spies Like Us: 50 Years Since Cold War Swap. At 8:52 on February 10, 1962 two men steadily walked in opposite directions across a bridge that divided East and West Berlin, barely noting each other. Their appearance was ordinary, but their fates had been decided by the world's most powerful men.

Within minutes, as the men got inside different cars and sped off, the bridge once again stood deserted - not needed by either side.

This was the end of a key episode in the Cold War.

It was the first of many spy exchanges between the USSR and the USA (eventually even the Glienicker Bridge, an ordinary steel construction where the exchange took place, became a landmark - dubbed The Bridge of Spies). It was also the end of two stories that had held the attention of leaders and ordinary people for years as the two superpowers bitterly fought each other without firing a single bullet. [Read more: RT/10February2012]

Section III - COMMENTARY

Still Secret After 30 Years? As the misguided war in Iraq made clear, intelligence analysis is an uncertain game, all too vulnerable to error and politically motivated distortion. That experience has done little to change the intelligence community's passion for secrets, whether or not they need to be kept.

Three decades later, we still do not know for certain - but have good reason to believe - that flawed or distorted intelligence led the Reagan administration to accuse the Soviet Union and Vietnam of using chemical weapons, known as yellow rain.

A classified critique of the intelligence behind those charges, written several years ago for the Central Intelligence Agency, could shed light on what happened. Last year, Matthew Meselson, a Harvard expert on chemical and biological weapons, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get the report released. He was turned down. The report should be made public both for its historical value and its possible lessons on how to handle the challenge of divining an enemy's capabilities and intentions.

In 1981 and 1982, the Reagan administration charged that the Soviet Union had supplied toxins made from a poisonous fungus to its Vietnamese and Laotian allies to use as a weapon against Hmong villagers who had sided with the United States during the Vietnam War and against anti-Vietnamese forces in Cambodia. [Read more: NYTimes/February2012]

Hoping the CIA Doesn't Read This. Perhaps I'm a tad paranoid because today I'm writing about the 50th anniversary of one of the most controversial moments in the Cold War. And one that the CIA had its greasy tentacles all over. By the way, some historians postulate that we didn't so much win the Cold War against the Russians as we outspent them.

Some think those were better days. Sure there was the threat of nuclear annihilation, but at least the country wasn't broke and planes weren't flying into skyscrapers. (Not to mention those unbearable Bin Laden basement tapes.)

In memory of that era I wrote a satirical screenplay, "The Last Straw," about rogue KGB and CIA agents longing to re-ignite the Cold War. Instead of saving the world from communism, grumpy CIA operative Rollie Southern curses that he's reduced to having to learn Arabic from Berlitz tapes on a recorder made in China!

But, dear readers, that's the end of the comedy portion of today's missive as I reflect back on May 1, 1960. Up to that point that was clearly the most ominous day in the life of 30-year-old American pilot Francis Gary Powers. The son of a Virginia coal miner and raised during the depression, he was on a CIA spy mission when he and his U-2 reconnaissance plane were shot down and captured in Russia. (At the subsequent trial Powers potentially faced the death penalty.)

When the truth came out the incident embarrassed America in the eyes of the world. It also derailed President Eisenhower's highly anticipated peace summit with the Soviets scheduled for only two weeks later.

The ultra-sleek U-2 was basically a glider equipped with a jet engine. Precarious to fly, it could, however, cruise above 70,000 feet, out of range of Soviet artillery. Or so we thought.

Powers, who had flown numerous and dangerous spy missions for years, was now a powerless pawn in a Moscow show trial. He was sentenced to 10 years, three in a cold, foreboding prison and seven to be in a work camp.

But, after 21 months in a Russian prison, we finally come to what took place 50 years ago, today. On a foggy pre-dawn at the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, and in a scene right out of a spy movie, Gary Powers was exchanged for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. But, while Abel was greeted in Russia as a returning hero, Powers was not. [Read more: Neworth/SMDP/10February2012]

$80 Billion Puzzle: The Part Of The Pentagon's Budget You Won't See. This is the week that the defense department unveils its fiscal 2013 budget request, which Pentagon policymakers have been heralding as a turning point in military spending priorities. So if you care to listen, you will be able to hear a lot about why weapons outlays are being cut, military healthcare costs are increasing, and land-based forces are losing money to sea-based forces.

However, there are a few items about which you won't hear anything.

You won't hear a word about the huge eavesdropping satellites the military has been launching, the biggest satellites ever built. You won't hear about the intelligence missions that U.S. submarines are silently conducting in the Eastern Mediterranean and Yellow Sea. You won't hear about the sprawling complex near Baltimore that monitors billions of emails every day. And you won't hear about the program awarded last year to develop new photo-reconnaissance satellites that can see what Chinese users are looking at on their laptops from over a hundred miles away.

All of these efforts and hundreds more are part of the government's vast intelligence-gathering enterprise, which is funded to the tune of $80 billion annually. Although the intelligence community consists of 17 different agencies and organizations scattered across the government, about 85 percent of the funding is hidden in defense department accounts. That's because most of the technology and personnel costs associated with the intelligence enterprise are incurred by defense agencies.

The activities of the intelligence community are organized under two overarching programs. The $55 billion National Intelligence Program collects and analyzes strategic information - meaning information relevant to the security of the entire nation - through four defense agencies, intelligence units in other cabinet departments, and the independent Central Intelligence Agency. The $27 billion Military Intelligence Program collects tactical information through the intelligence commands and field units of the military services relevant to their immediate warfighting needs. [Read more: Thompson/Forbes/13February2012]

Cuba and its Ongoing Engagement in Espionage in the Americas. Despite many pro-Cuba chants for economic aid and the lifting of the 50 year old Cuban Embargo placed via President John F. Kennedy's Proclamation 3447, there appears to be no shortage of funding by Cuba for that nation's energetic spy apparatchik.

The original U.S. Cuba manifesto, in 1962, expressed the necessity for the embargo until such time that Cuba would demonstrate respect for human rights and liberty. And today, there certainly cannot be much of an argument that the continuing Castro regime has complied with any aspect of that mandate. In fact, Castro's revolution has arrogantly continued to force horrific sacrifices on Cubans in their homeland, as well as the suffering by those that fled the murdering regime over the decades and left families behind.

Neither of the Castro brothers ever, even remotely, disguised their venomous hatred for the U.S., democracy, or the U.S. way of life - even prior to the embargo. Their anti-U.S. rhetoric echoes loudly throughout the world. And they continue to extol radical leftist and communist governments.

As simply partial evidence of continuing human rights abuses, and as recent as last month, the independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation said that the government was "using temporary detentions to disrupt events organized by the opposition." The Cuban regime made "brief arrests of 631 opponents in January" alone.

Cuba's security officials also continue to deny the holding of political prisoners, while saying that "Cuban dissidents are tools of the United States."

Do not underestimate Cuba's vast intelligence and espionage network. Their security and intelligence apparatus are on a scale perceived to be "many times larger than that of the United States." And even with Cuba's poverty, depressed economic situation and weak prognosis for future windfalls, their clandestine operational acts continue and extend throughout the Americas and the world.

The Cuban espionage budget is not generally known outside of most major competent intelligence services globally. However, much of their modus operandi is. Essentially the DI (Direcci�n de Inteligencia) never had to be reinvented, other than by moniker, from the former DGI (Direcci�n General de Inteligencia) with original training by the former Soviet KGB.

Cuba maintains one of its largest intelligence networks within Venezuela, with President Hugo Chavez preferring direct access to the service, as indicated by cables unscrupulously released and sent from the U.S. Embassy in Caracas to the State Department. This cozy relationship, between Cuba and Venezuela, reeks of potential massive funding hidden by obscure secret decrees. [Read more: Brewer/Mexidata/13February2012]

Section IV - Books, Jobs, Obituaries and Coming Events

Books

The Art of Intelligence: Lessons from a Life in the CIA's Clandestine Service. A legendary CIA spy and counterterrorism expert tells the spellbinding story of his high-risk, action-packed career while illustrating the growing importance of America's intelligence officers and their secret missions

For a crucial period, Henry Crumpton led the CIA's global covert operations against America's terrorist enemies, including al Qaeda. In the days after 9/11, the CIA tasked Crumpton to organize and lead the Afghanistan campaign. With Crumpton's strategic initiative and bold leadership, from the battlefield to the Oval Office, U.S. and Afghan allies routed al Qaeda and the Taliban in less than ninety days after the Twin Towers fell. At the height of combat against the Taliban in late 2001, there were fewer than five hundred Americans on the ground in Afghanistan, a dynamic blend of CIA and Special Forces. The campaign changed the way America wages war. This book will change the way America views the CIA.

The Art of Intelligence draws from the full arc of Crumpton's espionage and covert action exploits to explain what America's spies do and why their service is more valuable than ever. From his early years in Africa, where he recruited and ran sources, from loathsome criminals to heroic warriors; to his liaison assignment at the FBI, the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, the development of the UAV Predator program, and the Afghanistan war; to his later work running all CIA clandestine operations inside the United States, he employs enthralling storytelling to teach important lessons about national security, but also about duty, honor, and love of country. [Read more: PenguinPress/February2012]

Castro's Secrets: The CIA and Cuba's Intelligence Machine. In Castro's Secrets, highly acclaimed author and intelligence expert Brian Latell offers a strikingly original view of Fidel Castro in his role as Cuba's supreme spymaster. Based on interviews with high level defectors from Cuba's powerful intelligence and security services, long-buried secrets of Fidel's nearly 50-year reign are exposed for the first time. They include numerous assassinations and attempted ones carried out on Castro's orders, some against foreign leaders. More than a dozen ranking Cuban secret agents embraced by the CIA and FBI speak in these pages; some have never told their stories on the record before. Latell also probes dispassionately into the CIA's most deplorable plots against Cuba - including previously obscure schemes to assassinate Castro - and presents shocking new conclusions about what Fidel actually knew of Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. [Read more: MacMillan/February2012]

Jobs
 [IMPORTANT: AFIO does not "vet" or endorse these research inquiries or job offers. Reasonable-sounding inquiries and career offerings are published as a service to our members, and for researchers, educators, and subscribers. You are urged to exercise your usual caution and good judgment when responding or supplying any information.]

Director, Coast Guard Investigative Service; Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Coast Guard (USCG). 

Vacancy Announcement: CG-SES-12-01
Open Period: 9 February 2012 to 12 March 2012
Salary Range: $119,554 - $179,700
Position Location: Arlington, VA

The USCG is announcing a challenging Senior Executive Service career opportunity to serve as Director, Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS). The Director of CGIS serves as the senior federal criminal investigative executive within the Coast Guard and provides executive direction, leadership and management of the Coast Guard Investigative Service. Additional duties include:

- Provides leadership in the design, development, and implementation of policies, regulations, and procedures for Coast Guard-wide investigative operations and administrative activities of CGIS Regional and Resident Offices, task force operations, protective services, force protection, training, and special operations detachments of the CGIS. 

- Serves as a chief advisor to senior Coast Guard leadership providing expert advice concerning a variety of policy, direction, and managerial issues such as strategic planning efforts which affect the capability of the CGIS to support Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) goals and objectives. 

- Provides executive oversight of planning, developing and carrying out criminal investigations of highly sensitive cases concerning the most significant forms of criminal, cyber or environmental misconduct.

- Ensures all such operations are performed in accordance with Coast Guard, Department of Justice (DOJ), DHS, and accepted federal law enforcement standards and requirements; manages CGIS participation of Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and other federal, state, and local task forces, in which the CGIS agents provide maritime law enforcement expertise and facilitate information sharing between Coast Guard operational commanders and law enforcement partners.

- Works closely with senior criminal investigative executives of other government agencies, foreign and domestic, in assuring effective coordination on all related investigative and operational issues and administrative matters under the direction of those organizations.

The Director directly supervises and evaluates the CGIS Deputy Director, Assistant Director and staff attorney; and provides second-line supervision of the Regional Special Agents-in-Charge.

The selectee must attain a Top Secret/SCI clearance, and undergo pre/post-appointment random drug testing. U.S. Citizenship required. 

To review basic job requirements and to apply to this vacancy please visit: http://www.usajobs.gov/ and enter CG-SES-12-01 in the keyword search.

Seeking Intelligence Analyst candidates for immediate open positions in Afghanistan.
Position Description: The Intelligence Analyst functions as a part of an intelligence analytical team of military and/or DoD civilian analysts in support of CJ2 analytical requirements. The Intelligence Analyst is responsible for analysis, reporting, data base input and dissemination of Afghanistan measures of stability which include security, governance and development, Human Terrain Analysis, preparation of provincial and district assessments and Campaign and Mission Analysis briefings and annexes, High Value Individual Targeting products, Extremist and Regional Threat Network Nodal Analysis, Preparation of Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance Assessment Metrics which include daily IMINT, SIGINT and HUMINT products to gauge the effectiveness of collection operations, 24/7 Indications & Warning withstanding and all-source exploitation of documents and media from detainees. This position is mid level analyst.
The Intelligence Analyst is responsible for researching, developing, presenting and publishing all-source intelligence products at the tactical, operational and strategic level related to Military actions, insurgent activities, economic and political activities, and threats to regional stability as part of an overall analytical team. This position provides input to multiple Government requirements and objectives, assist with the analysis and production of various intelligence products, and supply analytical support for senior Military leaders. The Intelligence Analyst shall attend meetings and conduct comprehensive research on complex topics independently or as a part of a larger analytical effort focusing on current events and long-term trends that could impact the Government's mission. This position is responsible for intelligence analysis related to counter-terrorism, HUMINT, SIGINT, counterintelligence, Afghanistan and South West Asia regional issues, political/military analysis and support to targeting.

Position Requirements:
This position requires a minimum of 4 years analytical experience within DoD or equivalent Government agencies required, with operational level experience preferred. Experience in either CT, Afghanistan, South West Asia regional issues and HUMINT or political/military analysis desired.
• This position requires an Associate's Degree, and a Bachelor's Degree preferred.
• Shall be proficient in utilizing basic computer applications and intelligence related automation to support analytical efforts and product development.
• Possess strong research and writing skills and be capable of effectively operating as a member of a strategic level analytical team in the accomplishment of intelligence products and assessments. This position requires former MOS 1N, 35F, 350F, 18F, 35D, 34A or equivalent.
• This position requires Top Secret/SCI clearance (must be current).

The Walsingham Group offers a competitive benefits package to include: paid holidays, paid time off, medical, dental, vision, flexible spending account, long and short term disability and company paid life insurance, and a Safe Harbor 401(k) with profit sharing.
Walsingham is an EEO/AA employer M/F/D/V. We maintain a drug-free workplace and perform pre-employment substance abuse testing to include background checks.
Walsingham Group, a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business, is a premier service provider of operational support and training for our Federal clients. Walsingham partners with its clients in providing solutions for timely, objective, all-source military intelligence to policy makers, war fighters, and force planners to meet their full-spectrum challenges.
Apply on website at https://www.walsinghamgroup.com/apply.html or submit your resume to careers@walsinghamgroup.com.

Obituaries

H. Matson Smith. H. Matson Smith, 86, a retired Central Intelligence Agency officer who served in Vietnam, Europe and at CIA headquarters in Langley, died Jan. 24 at a hospital in Willoughby, Ohio. He had cancer, his cousin Mary Ashley Gustaf�son said.

Mr. Smith, a former resident of Arlington County and Falls Church, had lived in Ohio for the past three years.

He served in the CIA from shortly after its founding in 1947 until his retirement in 1987.

Harvey Matson Smith was born in San Francisco. He was the son of a career Army officer and moved about the world with his family as a child.

In 1945, he graduated from Dartmouth College. He served in the Army as a specialist in counterintelligence and languages before transferring to the CIA.

He married Marie Lange in 1980. She died in 2005.

He had no immediate survivors. [Barnes/WashingtonPost/10February2012]

George B. Holmes. George B. Holmes, 88, who spent 32 years in the CIA's directorate of operations before retiring in 1981, died Feb. 1 at the Ingleside at Rock Creek retirement community in Washington. He had Alzheimer's disease and pneumonia.

The death was confirmed by his daughter Sarah Holmes.

Mr. Holmes served in Belgium, Sweden, England and Cameroon and on the Mediterranean island of Malta. He was awarded the Career Intelligence Medal.

George Burgwin Holmes, a Pittsburgh native, simultaneously entered Yale University and the Navy's officer training program in 1942. He graduated in 1947 as a member of the Yale Class of 1945W, composed of students whose education had been interrupted by military service during World War II.

He spent a year studying French at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland before joining the CIA in 1949.

In 1950, Mr. Holmes co-founded the Augmented 8, a men's a cappella group in the Washington area.

He was a past chairman of the Friends of Music program at the Smithsonian Institution; a past chairman of the Washington Revels musical group; past board member of Hospices of the National Capital Region (now Capital Caring); and a past president of the Yale Club of Washington. His other memberships included the Chevy Chase Club and the Metropolitan Club.

Mr. Holmes was a docent at the Washington National Cathedral and vice chairman of the National Cathedral Association, which raises funds and promotes the cathedral.

His avocations included sailing. He moved to Ingleside from his home in the District about three years ago.

Survivors include his wife of 61 years, Nancy Trowbridge Holmes of Washington; three children, Brock Holmes of Chevy Chase, Katharine Caldwell of Severna Park and Sarah Holmes of Bethesda; and four grandchildren. [Bernstein/WashingtonPost/8February2012]

Coming Educational Events

EDUCATIONAL EVENTS IN COMING TWO MONTHS....

Call for Papers and Presentations for London Conference"Understanding and Improving Intelligence Analysis: Learning from other Disciplines" is event to be held 8 June and 13 July 2012 at Brunel University in Uxbridge, West London, UK

The purpose of these two events is to engage in a cross-disciplinary discussion about the value of learning from other fields to improve both the understanding and the practice of intelligence analysis. It will also create the network and infrastructure for an international consortium for the study of intelligence analysis.
Intelligence, like journalism, involves the acquisition, evaluation, and dissemination of information. In 1949, Sherman Kent, described as the father of US intelligence analysis, said: "Intelligence organizations must also have many of the qualities of those of our greatest metropolitan newspapers. …They watch, report, summarize, and analyze. They have their foreign correspondents and home staff…. They have their responsibilities for completeness and accuracy—with commensurately greater penalties for omission and error. . . They even have the problem of editorial control…. Intelligence organizations (should) put more study upon newspaper organization and borrow those phases of it which they require."
The event on 8 June 2012 will be devoted to what we can learn from this comparison between intelligence analysis and journalism. We want to take Sherman Kent's suggestion and expand on it; to look at this comparison from a variety of perspectives to include how new technologies have produced new sources of information and the resulting need to compete for consumers' attention.
But the similarities between intelligence analysis and journalism are not unique. Professionals in other fields—including medicine, the social and behavioural sciences, history and historiography, anthropology and other disciplines engaged in ethnographic research, econometric forecasting, and legal reasoning—also face many similar challenges to those that exist in intelligence analysis, including: Difficulties acquiring information from a wide variety of sources Vetting and evaluating the information that is acquired Deriving understanding and meaning from that information Impact of deadlines, editing, and other production processes on accuracy of analysis and assessment Problems in dissemination and distribution to consumers or customers Managing relationship between producer and consumer (role, responsibility, independence & objectivity) Developing professional infrastructure (recruit, select, train, & develop personnel; code of ethics) Overcoming impact of changing technology and alternative information distribution systems.
The event on 13 July 2012 will be devoted to explaining how practitioners in various non-intelligence fields overcome these kinds of challenges. How are their challenges similar to or different from those that exist in the intelligence arena? What can be learned from the comparison?
We welcome paper and presentation proposals evaluating best practices for overcoming challenges in any non-intelligence field that are analogous to those that exist in the intelligence field, or compares/contrasts challenges in intelligence analysis to those faced by professionals in other disciplines.
To submit a proposal, send an email to Stephen Marrin (stephen.marrin@brunel.ac.uk) by 18 March 2012 with: (1) Name of author/presenter, affiliation/institution and contact information (email and phone); and
(2) Paper Title and Abstract (a brief 200-500 word overview of the paper/presentation)
Notifications of acceptances will be made on or before 1 April 2012.
These events have been funded through a grant from the Brunel University Research and Innovation Fund. They are organized and hosted by Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies in collaboration with University of Mississippi's Center for Intelligence and Security Studies.

MANY Spy Museum Events in February, March, and beyond, with full details are listed on the AFIO Website at www.afio.com. The titles for some of these are in detail below and online.

1 - 29 February 2012, 9 am – 6 pm – Give Gift of Full Month access to Spy Museum as part of "LOVE A SPY"

This February, take your love undercover at the International Spy Museum! The Museum has developed a package to spice up the romance at your next rendezvous. Throughout February the Museum will offer a Love A Spy promotional package, which includes 2 tickets to the Museum's permanent exhibit and a special gift from the retail store that will help spies turn up the heat. This package is good throughout the month of February, excluding the Feb 18-19th holiday weekend. Tickets: $29.95 To purchase, visit www.spymuseum.org

15, 22 February 2012 - Washington, DC - "The Greatest Spies of WWII: De Clarens…and Hemingway?" (2-Session Daytime Course) at the International Spy Museum in collaboration with Smithsonian Associates

Imagine operating behind enemy lines using your wits, fame, or seductive powers to fight a ruthless adversary. The spies of World War II knew that they faced death upon discovery, yet they continued to engage in daring and dangerous exploits to thwart the Axis powers. Some were incredibly effective while others, like Hemingway, were just incredibly bold. In this series, a distinguished group of experts and former intelligence officers will introduce you to some of the bravest and most daring spies of the 20th century.

Jeannie de Clarens
Wednesday, 15 February 2012, 10:15 am – 12:15 pm at the International Spy Museum in collaboration with Smithsonian Associates Program

As a member of Georges Lamarque's French Resistance network, Jeannie de Clarens risked her life and was captured twice. Her exact and detailed reports on Germany's secret military plans, especially their development of the V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets, helped persuade Prime Minister Winston Churchill to bomb the German test site at Peenemunde. David Ignatius, Washington Post foreign affairs columnist and spy novelist, will profile his friend de Clarens using selections from his recently filmed interview with the formidable former spy.

Ernest Hemingway
Wednesday, 22 February 2012, 10:15 am – 12:15 pm at the International Spy Museum in collaboration with Smithsonian Associates Program

Ernest Hemingway, true to his macho image, plunged into WWII intelligence work with his brother Leicester and his son Jack. The Hemingways searched for Fascist spies in Cuba, patrolled the Caribbean for Nazi subs, parachuted into occupied France, roamed the battlefields of France after D-Day, and even met secretly with the KGB. Nicholas Reynolds, an intelligence and military historian who has taught at the Naval War College, served as Officer-in-Charge of Field History for USMC, and worked on the history of the OSS for the CIA Museum, will recount the Hemingways' exploits.
Tickets: $112 for the 4 sessions. Register by phone with the Smithsonian Associates at 202-633-3030 or online at http://residentassociates.org

15 February 2012, 3 - 4 pm - Washington, DC - "George F. Kennan: An American Life"

As one of the Cold War's most influential foreign policy thinkers, Kennan was the architect of containment and the Marshall Plan. But after leaving government, he went on to become one of the most outspoken critics of American diplomacy, politics, and culture during the last half of the twentieth century. Now the full scope of Kennan's long life and vast influence is revealed by one of today's most important Cold War scholars.
Organized by the Cold War International History Project in collaboration with the Kennan Institute and International Security Studies Drawing upon extensive interviews with George Kennan and exclusive access to his personal archive, former Wilson Center fellow and Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University John Lewis Gaddis, will discuss his revealing new biography, George F. Kennan: An American Life. Event takes place at 6th Floor Flom Auditorium, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Visit www.CWIHP.org for more information and to RSVP

Thursday, 16 February 2012, noon – 1:00 pm – Washington, DC - "Shadow Commander: The Epic Story of Donald D. Blackburn - Guerrilla Leader and Special Forces Hero" at the International Spy Museum

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army's most secretive unit may have been the Studies and Observations Group (SOG). This unit captured enemy prisoners for interrogation, rescued American POWs, and conducted reconnaissance missions in North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. It also ran teams of clandestine agents and conducted psychological operations. The leader of this group in the mid-1960s was a legendary Army officer, Donald Blackburn, a man who in 1942 had refused to surrender at Bataan and had gone on to raise a 22,000-man army of Filipinos to fight the Japanese. Author Mike Guardia will describe Blackburn's colorful life, how his SOG mapped out the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and how, after his return to Washington, he was the architect of the famous Son Tay Prison Raid, the largest POW rescue mission of the war.
Free! No Registration Required! For more information visit www.spymuseum.org

Thursday, 16 February 2012, 6 - 7:30pm - McLean, VA - "Intelligence and Counterintelligence Challenges of Militant Islam" - a talk by Dr. John Dziak.

Militant Islam is not just another religion fostering an evangelical message of transcendence while asking for a place in the public square with other faiths. As with the totalitarian ideologies of the Twentieth Century, it seeks to spread and impose an all-embracing plan of life through an uncompromising struggle, notwithstanding the opposition of those unwilling to submit to its self-ordained mission. This presents uncomfortable challenges to US intelligence and counterintelligence services. The specter of militant Islam on the march has features not unlike those that faced Western security services in World War II and in the Cold War. This presentation will explore and analyze some intelligence and counterintelligence dimensions of those challenges.
About the speaker Dr. John J. Dziak: President of Dziak Group - an intelligence consulting firm; a guest lecturer at the Institute of World Politics; Senior Fellow at the International Assessment & Strategy Center for counterintelligence, terrorism, and strategic deception issues; consultant to the National Intelligence Council; Adjunct Professor at National Intelligence University. He served five decades as corporate president and senior intelligence officer and executive in OSD and in DIA. Dziak received Ph.D. from Georgetown U and is graduate of National War College. He taught at the National War College, Georgetown, and GW, and lectures on intelligence and counterintelligence throughout US and abroad.
Where: The Westminster Institute, 6731 Curran Street, McLean, VA 22101,
RSVPs to: Katharine Cornell Gorka, Executive Director at kcg@westminster-institute.org or call 703-288-2885

21 February 2012, 11:30am - 2pm - McLean, VA - Defense Intelligence Forum features Dr. Michael Metcalf on China's new defense policy.
Dr. Michael Metcalf will speak on China's new Defense Policy. Metcalf holds a BA in Political Science from Western Carolina Univ, an MA in Political Philosophy from North Carolina State Univ and a PhD in Political Science from Catholic Univ. He worked 25 years at the Defense Intelligence Agency and 5 years at the Bureau of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of State. Over the years, he has developed a reputation in the Intelligence Community as a keen study of Chinese intentions. Currently, Dr. Metcalf is teaching at the National Intelligence University, where he focuses on China. His latest publication: "Imperialism with Chinese Characteristics? Reading and Re-Reading China's 2006 Defense White Paper" was written to help students and new analysts learn how to read Chinese documents and make sense of Chinese motivations and intentions. This publication will provide the basis for his presentation and is available as a PDF for downloading on the National Intelligence Press section of the NIU website: http://www.ni-u.edu/ni_press/pdf/Imperialism_with_Chinese_Characteristics.pdf
For this forum, you may attribute the speaker's remarks. Everything will be on the record.
Where: Pulcinella Restaurant, 6852 Old Dominion Drive, McLean, VA. Pay at the door with a check for $29.00 payable to DIAA, Inc.
Make reservations by 19 February 2012 by email to diforum@diaalumni.org. Include names, telephone numbers, and email addresses and choose Chicken Cacciatore, Tilapia Puttanesca, Lasagna, Sausage with Peppers, Fettuccini with Portabella for your lunch selection.
Pay at the door with a check for $29.00 per person, payable to DIAA, Inc.
Check is preferred, but will accept cash; however, credit card payments are discouraged

23 February 2012, 1230 - 1430 hrs - Los Angeles, CA - the AFIO Los Angeles Chapter meeting features Lt. Col. Phil Meinhardt USAF (ret.) on "Eagle Pull" in Vietnam

Meinhardt will be addressing the chapter on what happened after the 1973 truce in Vietnam and the evacuation of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, called 'Eagle Pull' which he wrote. Col. Meinhardt arrived in Vietnam on June 23, 1973 as the Air Force Liaison Officer to the Vietnamese Joint General Staff, continuing with assignments to the U.S. Support Activities Group and the Military Assistance Group, Thailand. Col. Meinhardt is a 1960 graduate of the Air Force Academy and pilot with a thirty-four year military career that included Chief of Advanced Concepts and Director of Advanced Space Technology for Air Force Space and Missile Systems. Col. Meinhardt is a former Republican nominee to Congress with an extensive planning and policy background.
RSVP AFIO_LA@yahoo.com if you would like to attend, lunch will be served for $20. The meeting will take place at the LMU campus in the Hilton Business Building in RM. 304

29 February 2012, 2 - 3 pm - Woodbridge, VA - OSS Veteran Elizabeth Peet "Betty" McIntosh, 97, to be awarded 2012 Virginia Women in History Award - AFIO members invited

The annual Virginia Women in History program, sponsored by the Library of Virginia and Dominion, recognizes eight women, past and present, who have developed new approaches to old problems, served their communities, striven for excellence based on the courage of their convictions, advanced their professions, and initiated changes that continue to affect our lives today. Previous honorees, ranging across four centuries of Virginia history and all fields of endeavor, have included Pocahontas, Ellen Glasgow, Grace Hopper, Barbara Johns, Sheila Crump Johnson, and Dolley Madison.
At an awards presentation and reception on March 29 in Richmond, the Library of Virginia will celebrate the lives and contributions of eight extraordinary women, including McIntosh. The World War II veteran was nominated for the honor by Linda McCarthy, of Markham, Virginia. The Library of Virginia posted the eight selectees for 2012 Virginia Women in History honors at http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/vawomen/
WHERE: McIntosh will receive her award during a special presentation at her retirement community - Westminster at Lake Ridge, 12191 Clipper Dr, Lake Ridge, VA 22192 - 703-496-3440 on February 29 from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm. At that time, she will also be interviewed on-camera for the Library's videotaped oral history program. AFIO members are encouraged to attend the ceremony.
As part of the Virginia Women in History program, the Library designs a poster featuring the eight honorees, which is provided to schools, museums, libraries, and other state educational institutions. In addition, a panel exhibition highlighting the women's contributions will be on display at the Library during the month of March; after that, the display travel around the state for the next twelve months.
An intelligence officer with the Office of Strategic Services, McIntosh worked in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War II. She was one of the few women assigned to Morale Operations, where she helped produce false news reports, postcards, documents, and radio messages designed to spread disinformation that would undermine Japanese morale.
After the war McIntosh wrote a memoir of her OSS experiences, published in 1947 as Undercover Girl. Her book Sisterhood of Spies: Women of the OSS (1998) describes the adventures of the brave women who served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II.

Wednesday, 7 March 2012, 6:30 – 8:30 pm – Washington, DC - "Intel and the Arab Spring: What Does the Future Hold?" at the International Spy Museum

How could the world have missed the signs that an Arab Spring was coming? Did the U.S. suffer from poor intelligence, compromised relationships, or simply a failure of the imagination? And now how do we prevent the reemergence of blind spots as we build relationships with rapidly emerging regimes and their intelligence services? Join experts Reuel Marc Gerecht, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, author of The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East, and a former Middle East specialist in the CIA's Clandestine Service; and Colonel W. Patrick Lang, former Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism, author of Intelligence: The Human Factor, and expert consultant on intel operations in Muslim countries; for a spirited discussion of how the U.S.'s understanding—or misunderstanding—of the Middle East affects intelligence collection and analysis in the region. Sparks may fly when the speakers share their potentially conflicting ideas about how the U.S. can alter a decades-old paradigm
Ticket: $15. To register or for more information visit www.spymuseum.org

Thursday, 15 March 2012, 11:30 am - Colorado Springs, CO – The AFIO Rocky Mountain Chapter presents a re-scheduling of Sheriff Terry Maketa speaking about his official visits to Israel and Trinidad.

This should be an interesting talk as El Paso County Sheriff's rarely travel this far from home. To be held at The Inn at Palmer Divide, 443 S. Highway 105 Palmer Lake, CO, Exit 161 westbound off I-25, West on Highway 105. Please RSVP to Tom VanWormer at robsmom@pcisys.net

Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 6:30 – 8:30 pm - Washington, DC - "Weapons of Mass Disruption" at the International Spy Museum

Was your computer one of the machines that attacked Estonia?
Go behind-the-scenes on some of the most aggressive cyber attacks of our time. Join Dave Marcus, Director of Security Research for McAfee Labs, for a special screening of Weapons of Mass Disruption. The film, inspired by the Spy Museum's exhibit of the same name, focuses on key events in the evolution of cyber warfare, from the CIA's successful cyber-sabotage of the Soviet Union's trans-Siberia pipeline in the 1980s, to Stuxnet, a calculated cyber attack on Iran in 2009-10. On-screen experts, including Marcus, discuss cyber attacks you may know: the two week attack on Estonia in 2007 in which the country was essentially shut down; and those you may not: the theft of F35 fighter related information in 2009. They also cover the cyber security issues financial institutions face and the vulnerabilities of critical U.S. water and electricity infrastructure systems. The fascinating interviews with cyber experts include insights such as which popular movie of 2007 made Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of the Kaspersky Labs, break out in a cold sweat. Marcus, who specializes in advance intelligence gathering, digital forensic analysis, as well as intrusion detection and prevention, will lead a post-screening discussion of the film's major points and the latest on information security, malware, and vulnerability assessment. Tickets: $15 To register or for more information visit www.spymuseum.org

22-24 March 2012 - Charlotte, NC - Charlotte International Cryptologic Symposium

The line up of speakers includes: Ron Lawrence who will open the Crypto Symposium with a short talk about all the events going on in the hotel and about radio collecting and how this came about.
Debbie Anderson, daughter of Joe Desch the man who designed the Navy Cryptanalytic Bombe, is speaking and showing the documentary "The Dayton Codebreakers." Jim Oram of enigma-replica.com will be speaking on: " Restoration techniques of the Enigma" includes the showing of a video on the restorations he has completed. Free tours of Jim's Enigma Shop where Enigmas are restored.
John Alexander, a private collector from UK, will be speaking and offering some views of his Crypto equipment.
Richard Brisson, a collector from Ottawa Canada with website www.campx.ca, recently retired from the Communications Security Establishment Canada, will be speaking on the history and artifacts related to cryptology and espionage.
Dr. David Hatch, of NSA and CCH, will provide a display of a SIGABA Machine. Dr. Nicholas Gessler, Research Associate Information Science & Information Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC.
Gessler will be bringing a wide variety of Historical Cryptologic equipment for display.
LOCATION: Sheraton Charlotte Airport Hotel, 3315 Scott Futrell Dr, Charlotte, NC 28208.
Register at http://www.cc-awa.org/Registration-2012.html
Registration covers both the Cryptologic Symposium and the Antique Radio Charlotte event.

29 March 2012 - San Francisco, CA - The AFIO Jim Quesada Chapter hosts Deputy Director Mike Sena, Northern California Regional Intelligence Center. He will be speaking about the the National Fusion Center Networks' role in the information sharing environment. The meeting will be held at UICC, 2700 45th Avenue, San Francisco (between Sloat/Wawona): 11:30AM no host cocktails; noon - luncheon. $25 member rate with advance reservation and payment; $35 non-member/no reservation. E-mail RSVP to Mariko Kawaguchi (please indicate meat or fish) at afiosf@aol.com and mail a check made out to "AFIO" to: Mariko Kawaguchi, P.O. Box 117578, Burlingame, CA 94011.

For Additional Events two+ months or greater....view our online Calendar of Events

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